The Other False Gospel

Someone shared a post on Facebook recently that has been sitting with me, and I want to write about what I think it is actually doing. The post said, in essence, that no one can come to faith in Christ through a false gospel, because God cannot deny Himself. People can become religious, the post said. They can change their lifestyle. They can sing and pray and imagine themselves sure of grace. But faith, real faith, never comes to a soul through a lie.

The post was confident. It read like the killing blow of a long argument the writer had won. And as I sat with it, the trouble of it surfaced slowly. Because the post is itself a false gospel. And I am writing this in part because there was a long stretch of years when I would have nodded along with it, when I would have shared it on my own wall, when I would have set my face against anyone who tried to gently say the thing I am about to say now.

Let me grant immediately what is true in it. Real false gospels do not save anyone. Paul said it as plainly as a man can say a thing. Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. Galatians 1:8. A gospel that points to a different Christ is no gospel. A gospel that asks a sinner to climb is no gospel. A gospel that mingles works and grace is no gospel. The man who finds himself trusting a different Jesus has trusted nothing. And so far the post and I agree.

But the post does not actually mean by false gospel what Paul meant. The post means whatever does not match the writer's own framework precisely. And when you make that substitution, when you let false gospel shrink down to not exactly my doctrinal articulation, the whole argument flips into the very thing it claims to oppose.

Here is what I mean. Paul did not condemn imperfect understanding. Paul did not condemn brothers who held different views on baptism or eschatology or the order of the decrees. Paul condemned a gospel that pointed sinners to themselves instead of to Christ. He condemned the Judaizers because they added a condition to faith. Believe in Christ and be circumcised. The addition was the crime. Faith plus anything is no faith at all.

And so the question to put to the post is this. What has its writer added? When he says, only those who hear the true gospel can be saved, and when the true gospel turns out to mean the gospel as I articulate it, framed by my emphases, distinct from my brothers who differ from me in some secondary point, he has done the very thing Paul condemned. He has added a requirement to faith. Faith in Christ plus correct doctrinal articulation. Faith in Christ plus the right tribe. Faith in Christ plus knowing what he knows. And by his own argument, that is another gospel.

The thief on the cross had nothing. He had not read a book, he had not sat under a sermon, he had not parsed a confession of faith. He had a few hours and one preacher, and the preacher was Christ Himself dying beside him. Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And the Lord said, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise. Luke 23:42-43. If the post's argument is right, the thief was lost. He did not have the articulation. He had only Christ. And one of these two will have to give.

The Ethiopian eunuch was reading Isaiah and could not understand it. How can I, except some man should guide me?Acts 8:31. Philip ran up alongside him and preached unto him Jesus. The eunuch believed and was baptized. He did not climb out of that chariot with a systematic theology. He had Christ. The Spirit had brought him to faith through one passage and one short conversation. A man wedded to the post's argument would have to say the eunuch was not saved, because he had not yet learned the full articulation. He had only the Lamb.

Cornelius feared God before Peter ever arrived in his house, and the Spirit fell on his household while Peter yet spake.Acts 10:44. Sinners have been brought to faith through tracts the institution would not approve, through hymns whose theology is uneven, through sermons riddled with errors that nevertheless held Christ in the middle. The Author has been writing on the hearts of His own through every kind of imperfect vessel for two thousand years, and the man who tells you the Spirit cannot work through a less-than-perfect preacher is telling you the Spirit is bound. Which is itself a denial.

But the deepest trouble of the post is what it has actually put in the place of Christ. Read it again. It does not call sinners to look at the Lamb. It does not place a hand on a trembling soul and say Christ for you, all of Christ, only Christ. It does the opposite. It tells the trembling soul that her experience might be counterfeit, that her pastor might be a fraud, that her sense of grace might be a feeling produced by a lie. It places the assurance of the believer not on Christ Himself but on whether the believer has been sat under the right doctrine. The savior in the post is not Christ. The savior in the post is the right framework. Be sure you sat under a true gospel preacher is the gospel the post preaches. And that is not the gospel. That is a doctrinal credential being sold as faith.

Faith is empty hands. Faith is a poor sinner with nothing to bring, looking at Christ, trusting Christ, leaning her whole weight on Christ. Faith is the thief on the cross. Faith is the publican in the temple beating his breast and saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. Luke 18:13. Faith is not a doctrinal credential. Faith is not a tribal membership card. Faith is not the confidence that you have been sat under preachers who got every emphasis exactly right. And the gospel says so as clearly as it says anything. To him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. Romans 4:5. Not his understanding. His faith.

So when a man stands up on Facebook and tells me that God cannot bring faith through a lie, I do not have to argue with the sentence. I can grant it as written. What I cannot grant is what he has hidden inside it. He has redefined the true gospel as the gospel as I deliver it, and he has redefined false gospel as the gospel my brothers preach with one emphasis I do not share. And by doing that, he has built another gospel of his own. Christ plus the right tribe. Christ plus the right vocabulary. Christ plus the assurance that you sat under the man with the cleanest framework on the internet.

That is a false gospel. And it is more dangerous than the ones he is pointing at, because it wears the costume of defending the truth while it is quietly stealing the assurance Christ alone gives.

The Lord saves. He saves whom He saves. He has saved sinners under preachers I would never showcase on this website. He has saved sinners under preachers whose theology I believe is bent. He has saved sinners through tracts the gatekeepers would burn. He has saved sinners in churches whose doctrinal statements are wrong on half the page, because the wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. John 3:8. The roll the gatekeeper keeps is not the roll the Lamb opens. And the day will come when the gates the gatekeepers built will fall over with no one beside them, because the Shepherd was outside the gate the whole time, and He went where He pleased.

So if you have read a post like the one I read this week, and it has laid you low, hear me. Your assurance does not rest on whether the preacher you sat under had every emphasis right. Your assurance rests on Christ. Look at the Lamb. Trust the Lamb. Rest your whole weight on the Lamb. Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. John 6:37. He said it. He meant it. And no post written by a man with a hashtag and a certainty has the authority to take it back.

Grace and Peace,
Brandan